Hit Rail B.V., the European rail industry’s data exchange specialist, has completed the migration of its HEROS interoperability platform to the public cloud. The move to Amazon AWS supported by expert consultants inQdo B.V., was designed to significantly improve the HEROS services, by providing a robust, reliable and scalable IT infrastructure. inQdo will also continue to maintain and support the HEROS IaaS (Infrastructure as a Service) platform on AWS - to meet the needs of Hit Rail’s growing number of customers seeking to improve their data exchange for rail freight and passenger services.
Antonio Lopez, general manager of Hit Rail said: “Our focus is always to provide our customers with strong, secure and scalable services. The interoperability requirements of the rail community are changing rapidly as established railway companies, plus the myriad of new smaller players in the market, address the requirements of the EU TAF and TAP TSI Regulations. We are seeing enormous growth, both in the number of customers on our platform and in their needs for data exchange. AWS provides a robust yet flexible infrastructure with computing power, database storage and networking functionality which we can build upon for our interoperability services, and which will always keep us ahead of the demand.”
The migration was managed with the help and support of inQdo B.V., a recognised AWS advanced consulting partner and reseller. Corné van der Steen, AWS Solution Architect of inQdo commented: “Together with Hit Rail and their partners we have now successfully migrated the HEROS platform to the AWS Public Cloud. This was a complex migration with issues around connectivity and interoperability that had to be resolved, but the expertise of both teams allowed us to create a powerful platform for Hit Rail’s services. We have now created a future-proof solution that enables Hit Rail to provide first-class services to its customers with the flexibility they need for the anticipated future growth in demand. On completion of the migration project, we have immeditaly started on the job of continuously improving the platform and delivering AWS support regarding the AWS IaaS platform."
Hit Rail B.V. provides telecommunications and IT services to the growing and rapidly changing European Railways community. It connects more than 50 railway companies through its private IP network the Hermes virtual private network (VPN). The company also provides a range of interoperability solutions under the HEROS brand, based on a middleware platform directly connected to the Hermes VPN. The move to AWS public cloud is a response to the changing landscape in the railway industry with ever faster digitalisation of services and products, and the drive towards greater operational efficiencies.
Antonio Lopez concluded: “The services we provide are critical to the rail businesses that are our customers. Moving to the cloud will bring significant benefits in availability, accessibility and reliability.”
